In a telephone conversation with this reporter, an officer in a North Korean border guard unit said, "In accordance with an order from the National Defense Commission calling for us to completely seal the border, border guard units and all the citizens of the border regions were mobilized and have been building a 2 meter high wooden fence since last month." Construction is first being done in those hard-to-patrol areas used by defectors to escape; wide-open, easily patrolled areas are being saved for later, he said.

The officer added, "The North Korea-China border is more that 1,000 li (about 400 km) long, and the reality is that it's impossible to block all of it. I can't understand who would present such an absurd idea."

Kim Myeong-shik (fake name), an ethnic Korean living in China who smuggles goods into the North, bitterly said, "Starting last month, the North Koreans began constructing something made of wood, and I was curious as to what was up. I found out it was something to stop defectors... When I heard that they were building this absurd wooden fence when they're busy just trying to survive, I was speechless."

Side by side with building the wooden fence, North Korea is also preparing traps at strategic spots along Yalu and Tumen rivers that are frequented by people.

A defector who recently crossed the border said, "The traps set up by the border guards are about 3 to 5 meters deep and have sharp metal or wood spikes at the bottom so people are killed or seriously injured when they fall into them."

These traps, which were installed outside political prison camps to stop inmates from escaping, have now made an appearance along the national border.

If work on the wooden fence and traps are completed, the North Korea-China border would be completely sealed off and the number of defectors escaping from the North would likely diminish markedly.

(Gang Cheol-hwan, nkch@chosun.com )